You can use the terms "and" & "or" in your search; "or" phrases are resolved
first, then the "and" phrases. For example, searching for "black hole and
galaxy or universe" will find articles that have the phrase "black hole" in them
and also have either "galaxy" or "universe" in them. Please note that other
search syntax like quote marks, hyphens, etc. are not currently supported.

When you view web pages with matches to your search, the terms you searched for will be highlighted in yellow.

If you are aware of an interesting new academic paper (that has been published in a peer-reviewed journal or has appeared on the arXiv), a conference talk (at an official professional scientific meeting), an external blog post (by a professional scientist) or a news item (in the mainstream news media), which you think might make an interesting topic for an FQXi blog post, then please contact us at forums@fqxi.org with a link to the original source and a sentence about why you think that the work is worthy of discussion. Please note that we receive many such suggestions and while we endeavour to respond to them, we may not be able to reply to all suggestions.

Please also note that we do not accept unsolicited posts and we cannot review, or open new threads for, unsolicited articles or papers. Requests to review or post such materials will not be answered. If you have your own novel physics theory or model, which you would like to post for further discussion among then FQXi community, then please add them directly to the "Alternative Models of Reality" thread, or to the "Alternative Models of Cosmology" thread. Thank you.

Could Consciousness Forge the Universe?
Objective reality, and the laws of physics themselves, emerge from our observations, according to a new framework that turns what we think of as fundamental on its head.

From Aristotle's theory of the spherical Earth to the discovery of the Higgs boson, this is an illustrated journey through the highlights of the history of physics. Part 1 tells the tale of how we discovered that there is one universal physics that applies to the entire observable universe. Part 2 explains how the fundamental forces of physics and the rules of quantum mechanics allow objects to keep their shapes. Part 3 describes the major breakthroughs of the past century, and speculates about what remains to be discovered.

Video Creator Bio

Marc Séguin has a master's degree in Astronomy and another in History of Science from Harvard University. He teaches Astrophysics and Physics at Collège de Maisonneuve in Montréal, and is the author of several textbooks.

Ian C Harris wrote on Aug. 7, 2014 @ 15:57 GMT

Very well made video! I enjoyed your brief history of physics - it was done in such a way that made it interesting without feeling like it was dragging on. One of my critiques would be that the animation seemed to get a little repetitive as the video progressed. I understand that it's difficult to mix things up considering the content that you were covering, but I think a little more variety would have made it that much better. I really appreciate your first musical selection, I thought it was very fitting and fun. Overall solid video!

Alexander Roth wrote on Aug. 24, 2014 @ 00:16 GMT

Dear Mr. Marc Séguin,

This is an excellent video which will provide, for science minded parents and grandparents, a wonderful presentation very clearly illustrating the physics/astronomy basics our young people should be familiar with. The animations/graphics deserve special credits.

Unfortunately, science is not well handled in our schools and I hope that this video gets to be widely seen on YouTube.

Good luck for the competition.

Alexander Roth (Special Relativity…….)

Anonymous wrote on Aug. 31, 2014 @ 16:08 GMT

Hi Marc,

Thanks so much for reviewing my video!

I liked your video a lot; the animation was very good as well as the story line. I look forward to watching your other videos to see how you will expand on the topic.

Good luck in the competition!

Emily

Adam Washington wrote on Sep. 2, 2014 @ 06:35 GMT

Hi Marc

You have a lot of good information in your video. It lays out a great framework in explaining some of the history behind physics. My only suggestion would be to try to find a more creative way to present the information, so that it stirs today's generation to see how physics applies to their world. In other words, so that they can see how these early findings in physics still have current applications in determining and explaining things beyond science.

I had seen your really nice three part physics story in full soon after it was posted. And I do intend to rate it, soon as I finish seeing all videos - I have a few left still :-)

My best wishes,

Tejinder

Spyridon Michalakis wrote on Sep. 6, 2014 @ 18:17 GMT

Hi Marc,

Thank you for your kind comments on the animation we did with PhD Comics on quantum computers. I watched your videos and you have done an excellent job explaining the journey of physics to its modern form.

Good luck!

Spiros

James Lyons Walsh wrote on Sep. 6, 2014 @ 20:42 GMT

Hi,

I did watch this video quite a while ago and was very much impressed. I had forgotten to come back and rate it. It displays the highest technical prowess, and the explanations are perfectly clear. I particularly enjoyed the fact that the video is self-contained, requiring no prior knowledge and being accessible to young people, something we tried for in our video. The discussion of the word "force" was very nice. The only thing I would have liked to see that was not present was an explicit motivation for learning more about physics, but maybe that's in the subsequent videos.

James

Douglas Alexander Singleton wrote on Sep. 8, 2014 @ 00:14 GMT

Hi Marc,

We very much liked the 1st one on the series (still need to watch the other two but we thought we might as well make comments of each as we view them). The first in the series tells the important story (in a very good and well produced video) of how humans began to understand how the Universe works and how through the "reading what was written in the sky" people came across the beginnings of science. The story about how people figured out the Earth was a sphere (from the shadow it cast on the moon during a lunar eclipse) is great. There is also a related story that a Greek Eratosthenes of Cyrene (chief librarian of the Library at Alexandria) was able to figure out the radius of this sphere by measuring shadows in different parts of Egypt at a specific time of year. It is amazing how much people learned (and then forgot).

Anyway a very strong submission. We'll also take a look at your other videos.

Best of luck with the contest.

Mike, Max, Dan, Simon, Doug

Douglas Alexander Singleton replied on Sep. 8, 2014 @ 04:48 GMT

On added note -- we just noticed that you used Kevin MacLeod for some of the music to you video. we did as well. Good stuff.

Best,

Mike, Max, Dan, Simon, Doug

Cristinel Stoica wrote on Sep. 8, 2014 @ 07:14 GMT

Dear Marc,

Very beautiful videos with excellent explanations. Thanks for commenting on the first of my videos, and for suggesting to add subtitles. Actually, both the first and the second have subtitles, but you have to activate them on youtube. Good luck with the contest!

Cristi

Mark Edward Prince wrote on Sep. 8, 2014 @ 12:37 GMT

Great animations! I shall use them in my physics lessons! Great to see animations of the geocentric models, it makes retrograde motion much easier to fathom for high school students. Well done.

Member Antony Garrett Lisi wrote on Sep. 11, 2014 @ 02:31 GMT

Very well done animations. Voted this video up.

Here's my Higgs Geometry video. It's tricky to present the mathematics of symmetry breaking and particle physics to a popular audience, so I do appreciate feedback on it.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2154

Michael muteru wrote on Sep. 13, 2014 @ 11:14 GMT

dear marc

fantastic video,nice soundtrack,most of all i like the basic concept unification.i voted for your video hope you also vote my simple video-http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2223,dont worry i not that drab but i hope it has a concept within.thanks.

Dov Henis wrote on Jun. 13, 2015 @ 08:36 GMT

On Science basest basics in non-academEnglish verbiage

The ONLY scientific elucidation/implications of gravitation are by Dov Henis

There is a book called "Farewell to Reality" by Jim Baggott. It is about all of the nonsense and the fantastically ridiculous claims that the modern physicists are currently making a fortune off of. Mr. Baggott states, among other things, that the physics' community is playing games, not making sense in their advocacy of new ideas in physics, and that they are increasingly out of touch with...

There is a book called "Farewell to Reality" by Jim Baggott. It is about all of the nonsense and the fantastically ridiculous claims that the modern physicists are currently making a fortune off of. Mr. Baggott states, among other things, that the physics' community is playing games, not making sense in their advocacy of new ideas in physics, and that they are increasingly out of touch with reality and truth. The modern, academic, mainstream physics' community is very BIG BUSINESS/BIG MONEY. All the way from "math is everything in physics", to string theory, to the nonexistent "experience" of Mars that will (and can) never be realised/had (as I have clearly proven), to overly expensive tuition, to courses you don't really need (but you are still required to take), etc., etc., it is quite clear what is going on. In fact, I have proven what is really going on by fundamentally and extensively unifying physics in a fashion that proves that they are incapable of truly great top down thinking. How can you be at Z, when you are already not even at A through V? You can't. I proved that you can't be. I proven that their "approach" is a never-ending game of tricks, ploys, nonsense, illusions, and evasions that are basically designed to make as much money as possible. STOP THE LIES AND THE RIP-OFFS IN PHYSICS. More proof of this comes as the clear and pathetic fact that the academic, mainstream, theoretical physicists along with the so-called "experts on dreams" (which they are not) are ignoring and evading all of my ideas (and my fundamental, proven, consistent, clear, important, and extensive unification of gravity, inertia, and electromagnetism). This all PROVES that these people do not want to fundamentally advance the understanding of physics/physical reality/physical experience, as more "problems" in physics mean more money. Ask them about my ideas. It is pathetic the extent to which people in the Unites States are increasingly being lied to, ripped off, and being put down/held back. Money, fantasy, lies, escapism, and excess profits rule the day, with wisdom, truth, fairness, reality, justice, open-mindedness, thinking ability, integrity, honesty, privacy, freedom, reason, NATURAL EXPERIENCE, and labor/employees increasingly finishing last. I DEMAND ACADEMIC HONESTY AND TRUTH IN PHYSICS, AND I WILL HAVE IT.